


The Parting Glass

by greywash



Series: Post-Magicians 4x13 Fics [4]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Breakups, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Reconciliations, Rituals, Road Trips, Starbucks, The American Southwest, Trailering, YLALT, YOLO, unless you're on The Magicians and then lbr:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22467991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: Eliot and Julia share a drink. Alice considers a road trip.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater and Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater and Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater and Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn (background; past), Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh (background; past)
Series: Post-Magicians 4x13 Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1362769
Comments: 5
Kudos: 69





	The Parting Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Under [my usual warning policy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings), let's call it... warnings for **disturbing content** , I guess? As always, feel free to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com) with specific warnings-related questions. I haven't seen and do not plan to watch any of S5; this is, however, canon-compatible up through 4x13. 
> 
> Things that are hard to tag for: this is fundamentally a friendship fic and I would very much class it as gen, but if you wanted to, you could probably read it as either Eliot/Quentin or Eliot/Julia/Quentin endgame. 
> 
> Originally from an idea for **fan_flashworks** , "Cup," but neither started nor finished on time, so. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Many thanks to **breathedout** for the beta on this little throwaway bonbonlet of a fic. ♥

### One.

Julia wakes up and puts on the coffee and then goes to shower, do her makeup, dry her hair: she's got the spells to hand again now, so it takes less than a third of the time. Redefining Pyrrhic victory. Back in the kitchen, she pours out two cups; then adds a piece of toast, a smear of almond butter; she's basically never hungry in the mornings, but eating something seems to help. She sits. Thumbs open her phone and pulls up the headlines—

"This up for grabs?" 23 asks, pointing at the second mug.

"No," Julia says; and reaches for her own; he frowns, but goes over to the pot, and Julia goes back to her phone.

* * *

"Oh, thanks," Kady says; holding a hand out.

"Not for you," says Julia; then—tilts her head. Not relenting, but—nearly. "There's more in the pot," she admits; and then takes both mugs back to her room.

* * *

Julia comes into the kitchen. Starts the coffee. Sticks a slice of bread in the toaster. She winds her hair up: it's going to be a busy day. Gets down two mugs; and then, after a moment's hesitation, a third.

Behind her, Alice makes a noise: hard, angry. Impatient.

Her chair scrapes, as she gets up to leave; and Julia puts the third mug back in the cupboard.

* * *

"This is weird," Margo tells her, from the kitchen doorway. "This is getting weird."

"Our lives are weird," Julia counters. Her hand hovering over the second cup: "And what do you mean, _getting_?" Margo glares at her: it's been three months. Fuck her, and fuck her timeline: what has she lost, anyway? "Touch it and I'll spell-strip your fingernails," Julia says, pleasant; and then sips her coffee.

Margo rolls her eyes. "There's no need to get all Baddest Bitch on _me_ ," she says. "Keep your pants on, Wicker, I'm not going to steal your ghost coffee. Eliot said there was a bunny for me?"

* * *

"This seat taken?" Eliot asks, touching the back of the chair one across from her, and one to her left.

"No," Julia says. "Not that one."

Eliot nods, and pulls it out, at an angle. Sets his phone down, a handspan from the second mug of coffee; and then goes into the kitchen, to make another cup.

* * *

### Two.

Eliot read a lot, while he was recovering. Whatever, fuck off: he was trapped at Brakebills, with a cavernous hole inside him and an axe-wound in his belly: there just wasn't that much to _do_. So—he read a lot. Whatever he could get his hands on, honestly. 

Eliot's feeling all over cultural appropriation, lately. He keeps wanting to—like, fuck it. Because if he thought it would help, sure, he could be that white guy: leave out pumpkin and amaranth seeds, or a bowl of rice with chopsticks in it; but Quentin was a massive diva about food to begin with and mostly what Eliot—or, well, Eliot _qua_ Eliot, the Eliot who he's at least 90% sure isn't a shared magical delusion—remembers Quentin voluntarily putting in his mouth is alcohol. So Eliot goes Greek, or—Greek-ish, maybe; Greek in the allusive sense, at least (and after all, when isn't he); and starts tipping out libations: quietly, in secret, where no one can see.

Julia's always had more guts than him, anyway.

It's six months before Eliot—heart pounding, hands trembling—pours the second glass of wine in front of her: she doesn't even look up. He doesn't totally know what he expected: she never acknowledges it when _she_ does it, either; but it still feels—weird, somehow. Uncomfortable. Like taking off his clothes in front of her, or worse: putting them on: letting her see—what he looks like, becoming armored; the act of becoming, via ritual. By way of _that_ ritual, in particular: Eliot pouring a splash of Pinot into a glass, swirling it around, taking a sip; letting it linger just a moment in his mouth, before he swallows, tops it up, and then fills another. 

He pours a third for Julia; and when he holds it out, she accepts.

Saying nothing.

So. That's six months, and then eight, and then ten: Quentin's been dead for almost a year. "It seems like you're doing better," Margo had said, the last time she was visiting; "starting to—move on, maybe": she had sounded—so _relieved_ ; and so Eliot had changed the subject. Because Eliot—might be doing better, but what does that even mean, _moving on_? Would it be—going out and putting his dick in someone, or wanting to, or wanting to want to; or would it be—wanting to hold them, or kiss them, or tell them in the dark about every moment he'd been scared or weak, every time he'd been something pallid and squirming and shameful, because—because they'd fucking _earned_ it, that vulnerability from him, and because he wanted them to have it: to hold it, in their broad steady clever hands? Because for very fucking different reasons, none of that feels all that much like _moving on_ at all. What does moving on even fucking _look_ like? Eliot's pretty fucking sure it's not—take the person you're moving on from, and run find-replace; but he's got no fucking idea what the alternative would even be. So here is where Eliot is, in February of 2020: a grad school dropout, a half-strength half-trained magician, still only half-healed from a near-fatal wound in his belly, and annoyingly in love with a dead guy; throwing low-key macabre cocktail parties with Quentin's maybe-Willow-ing best friend and lying-by-omission to his own: but— _okay_ : Eliot is _okay_ , he feels— _okay_ about it: he's just—at peace, with his fucked-up body and his fucked-up life and his war-torn heart: _okay_ , in this intangible way that he thinks he won't ever be able to totally articulate. This is just—where he is, now; it's where he needs to be: he sleeps in what he has been reliably informed is Josh's old room in the penthouse. He gets up in the morning, and Julia makes three cups of coffee before portalling to campus; in the evening, he makes them both dinner, then sits with her while she does her first-year second-term PA homework, beside three glasses of wine. Six, eight, ten. 

Twelve—

—and both of them jerk their heads up, when Alice shoves past them: Julia's studying for finals, and Eliot has been reading _The Sluts_ —man cannot live by Joseph Campbell alone, okay—on his phone; but Alice pushes Julia's books off the table, _and_ Eliot's backup battery, _and_ the popcorn, in her crashing rush to grab all three glasses and fling them behind her: a cymbol-crash of glass against glass, almost loud enough to temporarily drown out Alice shouting, "—and you just—you both just keep—and it's not—it doesn't _mean_ anything, it's not _important_ , it doesn't do anything, it's not going to fucking— _bring him back_ —"

—as Eliot is staring past her at the remnants of their wine glasses, sliding down their broken mirror—

—and Alice is saying, "—but the two of you just keep acting like—like you're still fucking— _entitled_ to it, when I'm—I'm just—I'm just trying to _get through my day_ —"; and Julia interrupts to say, "Uh—Alice, could you—hold that thought, for a second": pushing up to her feet to grab—the blanket, the _blanket_ , of fucking course, why didn't he—as Eliot is stumbling over, crouching down: just barely catching Quentin as he falls forward out of the mirror, and nearly kills himself all over again on the mess of broken glass around their bare feet.

* * *

### Three.

Alice looks up. Then down. Then up, then down again: at the shitty folding paper map she'd ultimately had to buy from Amazon, because this was, to her best knowledge, the first time anyone had had to cast a locator from the Library for fucking _Blythe, California_ —

"Oh," Quentin says, coming around the corner of the trailer, "hey"; and then—he's looking at her, probably, from behind those huge pink sunglasses: as she watches him take a long, _murderously enraging_ slurp of iced coffee, through a green Starbucks straw. 

He looks—

—fine, probably. Whatever. He's wearing cargo shorts and a faded black t-shirt: the sunglasses are probably a joke. It's a little hard to tell, because the sun is so bright and it's so glare-y and also about a hundred and five degrees, but he has, she thinks, a tan.

"Jules is still inside," Quentin says, after a second. "Our plumbing's kind of messed up, and she had to pee. And El was having a super involved conversation with the barista about stargazing, is this about—"

"I don't care about them," Alice interrupts; and then huffs. 

She crosses her arms. Just—looking at him: fucking— _impossible_ , the whole fucking thing: Quentin Coldwater, three months out of the underworld on a fucking _road trip_ , to _California_ , with a _tan_ —

"I—this is weird," Quentin says, after a second. "And—hot, it's also very hot, do you want to come in?"

"Is it _less_ hot in the trailer?" Alice snaps.

Quentin fidgets. "I—don't know?" he says, finally. "It's—less exposed, anyway": so she jerks her head, and follows him up through the rattle-y metal door, banging shut at their back.

It is cooler in the trailer, but it's stuffy: a half-dozen ventilation and cooling spells not really up to the middle of the Southwest in July. The trailer has a loft with a sleeping bag and one big bed; Alice isn't asking. Their clothes are all over the place: floral vests and long skinny trousers and cuffed size-00 shorts and sundresses hanging from an exposed closet rod all mixed up with Quentin's ratty t-shirts and jeans, his Converse in a dusty heap with about nine pairs of sandals in various sizes and degrees of dilapidation: Quentin has to move a microscopic green bikini to make room for them both to sit at the trailer's tiny banquette, which is vinyl and covered in orange-and-yellow flowers. The bikini is Julia's, probably.

"So," Quentin says, getting out his phone: he's not even _looking_ at her, Jesus Christ. "What prompted the visit, if you don't need Julia? We're. A little out of your way, I'd think." 

"Put that away," Alice snaps; and then—back prickling, waving: "please," she adds, throat tight; and Quentin darts a look at her over the top of his sunglasses, but does. Pushes the glasses back into his hair, too: _God_ , those glasses are ugly. Eliot must cry, every fucking time. She probably shouldn't be glad about that.

"Okay," Quentin says, and then—laughs, a little awkwardly. Turns his phone face-down; and then takes another slurp of coffee: still not looking at her, not looking at her, not looking at her.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," Alice says: tight, and fast. Like ripping off a Band-aid, she thinks; but that's not how it feels at all.

Quentin drums his fingers against the edge of the table. "I mean." He laughs again: a short, huffy sort of sound. "I did—write to you."

"Yeah, but sorry if I don't find goodbye letters from you hugely reassuring," Alice says, flat; and a slow, dark flush starts at Quentin's collar, and creeps, very slowly, up his cheeks.

The trailer is quiet. Just—their breath, and the faint, rhythmic whistle of the spells. Some traffic noise outside, but not much: Blythe, California. 

"Sorry," Alice says, after a second. "If reminding you of that was—tactless, or whatever."

"No." Quentin shakes his head. "No, I—no. It's fine."

He shakes his head again: swallowing, visibly, as he looks up at the ceiling. 

"I asked El to—well. Do you want—a water, or something?" Quentin says; and then—looks at her, actually looks at her: right in the eye. Ugh. She hates him, sometimes.

"Fine," she says; and he nods, and gets up: comes back a second later with a sweating plastic liter bottle, half-empty, and a pint glass.

"We need to stop for more ice," he says apologetically. "Our fridge is sort of busted, too."

She waves it away, and—takes the glass. It's plastic, actually, as it turns out. It has a flamingo on it. The water's still pretty cold, though. She drinks about two-thirds of it in one go.

"How did you end up here, anyway?" Alice says.

"In Arizona?" Quentin asks.

"You're in California," Alice snaps; and Quentin hunches, a little, under his t-shirt. 

"Uh—you're just past the state line, though," Alice offers, after a second. "I can see why you would've missed it."

Quentin rubs his thumb through the wetness on the water bottle. "We've been sort of—meandering back and forth," he says, after a second. 

"Yeah," Alice says, quiet.

"I want to learn how to surf," Quentin says; and Alice looks up. Quentin hunches up more, looking down at his elbows. "I—it's dumb, I know, I just. I thought—Jules asked me what I wanted to do this summer and I asked her what she wanted to do this summer and she said me first and I said I wanted to learn how to surf so she said she wanted to drink margaritas with me and when I asked Eliot what _he_ wanted to do this summer he said he wanted to go somewhere—somewhere warm enough, so. Sure, he'd come, too."

Alice is about a thousand percent sure that is not what Eliot said. "Okay," she says.

Shifts.

"Good surfing, is there," she asks, after a second, "in the middle of the American Southwest?"; and Quentin flushes a bright, unflattering magenta.

"We're working our way towards San Diego," he says; not looking at her. "Um—San Onofre. We're just, uh."

He stops. Still—with his head bent, his ears—flushed—

"You're taking your time," Alice suggests, after a second; and Quentin.

Looks up.

Meets her eyes.

"Yeah," Quentin says, finally. Her ribs feel—unsteady, like there is something—squirming, disconnected, in her insides. "I'm taking my time."

Behind her, the trailer door bangs open; and Julia and Eliot come in: arguing, noisily, about whether or not you need to stay three days at the Grand Canyon or "—a week, Jules, come _on_ , at least—your coffee, madame," Eliot says, bowing to Alice (somehow) with a flourish, even in that tiny space: and handing her a caramel frappucino, with extra whip.

Alice looks at Quentin, who is—smiling at them: easy, almost; accepting Julia's thoughtless kiss to his temple before she complains about him draping her bathing suit over the rim of the window in the path of the spells which will wear it out _even faster_ and then fussily drapes it over the handle of a sunbrella they've wedged in next to the bed, instead: "Are we staying?" Eliot asks, after taking the bottle of water back from Quentin, and cramming it back into an overfull cooler: "I thought you wanted to get into the campground before dark, so if we're stopping for ice—"

"I _do_ ," Quentin says: exasperated, as though—as though this is an argument, Alice notes, that they have had before. "But if Alice can hang out for a bit—c'mon, we haven't seen her for— _months_ , I've barely—"

"No," Alice says; and pushes up to her feet. The trailer is—cramped. Claustrophobic: too small. "No, I can't stay, I just—I'd better go."

"Alice," Quentin says; and then, more quietly, "Vix."

"Can you help me tie the spells up?" Eliot asks, after a second; and Julia says, " _Yes_ , the _spells_ —": and then both of them bang back off the trailer, as though—as though she can't see through that immediately, and just—

"Look," Alice says: feeling—impatient. With the entire fucking thing. "I don't care what you're doing in this trailer; I don't care what you're doing with Eliot or with Julia or with both of them or with the barista you found at a drive-through Starbucks in _Blythe, California_ because come on, Quentin, _stargazing_?"

"There's less light pollution," Quentin mumbles; and she says, "Shut up"; so he shuts up.

She sighs; and rubs at her forehead. She wishes that weren't always so fucking easy.

"We're broken up, right?" she asks; and Quentin looks down at his hands. " _Quentin_. Stop being a self-centered douchebag for, like, ten fucking seconds, and answer me. We're done, right? We broke up. I seem to remember that happening a couple months ago, but—it's happened a few times, so I'm never sure if—"

"No," he says, quiet. "We're done."

" _Okay_ ," she says: feeling—relieved. Mostly she just feels—relieved. "Okay," she repeats: and then closes her eyes.

Sighs.

"So, if we're done," she says: her voice wobbles, but fucking _why_? She clears her throat. 

Swallows.

"If we're done, and you're just—some guy I know": she waves a hand; as he looks up. "Or maybe, like—a friend," she says, after a breath; and his shoulders—relax, ever so slightly. 

She looks out the window. Pushes her glasses up.

"Maybe you could like—email me, every now and again," she says, finally. "Or—message me, or whatever."

He looks down at their banquette table: vinyl and floral, _honestly_. "Yeah," he says, after a second. "And—you could, like. Stop by, maybe," he says. "For coffee": and then nudges her cup towards her; and looks up again.

Her chest is tight. Her spine.

"Yeah," she says, and picks it up. "Since—since you still remember my order, don't you?"

His mouth quirks: a dimple showing, but just the one, on the left.

"Yeah," he says. "I do."


End file.
